Somebody to Lean On
by Orion'sProdigy
Summary: Sometimes everything catches up all at once. It happens to everyone. This time, it's happening to her. (Not a songfic.)


It'd been a year since they'd made it back from the war, and to Sakura, it felt like things had barely slowed down since. Between keeping up with the hospital, preparing the new mental health programs she'd been pushing, running missions to various villages for weeks at a time to help them get their own programs online, keeping Naruto in line, helping Kakashi prepare to take the mantle of Hokage, and taking occasional regular roster missions (recons, retrievals, escorts, and so on), she'd barely had time to breathe, let alone process everything that had happened.

Things had finally started to slow down again as winter rolled around. The village repairs were very nearly complete, only a few buildings still under construction in the market district. Incoming missions had dwindled due to the snowy weather, and Kakashi had finally taken his oaths and assumed the hat of responsibility. The hospital was getting an average number of flu cases, and the new training programs that had been instituted ensured that there were plenty of civilian nurses and low level medics around to deal with such domestic matters.

For the first time in too long to bother remembering, Sakura found herself with free time. She wasn't entirely sure whether she was glad for it yet, especially the way free time seemed to leave her with too much time to think. Thinking meant many unwanted side effects.

She'd seen a lot of death during the war. As a medic, she'd spent hours and hours (days, even) in the mobile hospital that had been set up. And prodigious talent or not, there were just some injuries you couldn't mend, especially when you were stretched thin and worn down and twenty hours into an eight hour shift for lack of capable hands. She wasn't used to losing going in, but by the time the encampment had been disbursed to return to their own villages, she'd gone numb to the statistics.

Saying goodbye to Sasuke for the nth time, however hopefully the encounter had ended. Watching him walk away again had been hard. Naruto was a comfort, as he always had been, but they were both so incredibly busy that the time they got to spend together was usually wrapped up in diplomatic missions or watching each other's backs.

While she was too busy to do anything but work and sleep, it hadn't affected her as much. But now, with time on her hands, she found herself increasingly swallowed up by her thoughts. It crept up on her in ways she didn't expect, more stealthy than the deadliest of assassins, and it caught her by the center of her chest sometimes with an iron grip, threatening to smother her and drag her down into the darkness that all the faces she'd lost disappeared into after they flashed behind her eyes.

It was one of the darker nights, as she curled on her bed staring at a scroll she hadn't been reading for the last fifteen minutes, when the emptiness of the room pressed in on her all at once. The invisible hand clamped around her lungs and she set the scroll aside, sitting up and then dropping her head into her hands.

Naruto was gone; she'd said goodbye to him just that morning as he took off from the front gates. It hadn't helped her situation, watching him disappear into the distance and leave her behind, however much that wasn't what was happening this time.

Ino was an option, but it seemed like the wrong one in Sakura's heart. The woman was one of her best friends, but this just didn't seem like the type of thing to take to her. Tsunade was another option, but she was currently unavailable, off traveling and enjoying her retirement. And besides all that, Sakura didn't really want their comfort. She wanted blonde hair and onyx eyes and ridiculous excuses. Her team had bonded like few others ever did, and she missed her boys in a way that she hadn't in a long while.

Without really knowing what she was doing, Sakura stepped into her sandals and draped her warm cloak around her shoulders, ducking out of the small apartment and stepping onto the snowy street below. Her feet carried her absently along the familiar streets; at least the biting cold on her cheeks was a distraction, giving her something else to focus on instead of the haunting faces and the retreating backs in her mind.

She didn't really realize where she had ended up until she was tapping on an icy window and meeting her confused ex-sensei-team-leader-come-Hokage's gaze through the frost.

Kakashi slid open the window swiftly, admitting her along with a gust of frigid air; she was careful not to let the snow that had collected on her cloak fall on the papers on his desk, stepping over it carefully to stand in the middle of the tiny apartment, somewhat at a loss.

"Sakura...is something the matter?" Kakashi asked as he slid the window shut, turning to face her, dusting frost from his palms on his sleeveless shirt. "It's kind of late for a social call."

She chewed her lower lip for a moment, gathering her composure before looking up, meeting his gaze; this was apparently a mistake, because she could feel her eyes burn and her lip quiver faintly. Her head dropped again and she swiped a hand across her face, struggling to contain the sudden fit of sobbing that wanted to break out of her chest. This wasn't what she'd wanted, to embarrass herself in front of Kakashi, to invade his space when she knew he wasn't comfortable with emotions-

Strong arms wrapped firmly around her shoulders, guiding her up against a broad, hard chest. A cloth covered chin came to rest on top of her head, a big hand cradling the back of her head.

"I wondered how long it'd be," he murmured, his voice reverberating against her ear as she buried into him, weeping silently and gripping his shirt in tight fists. "It doesn't mean you're weak, Sakura...you've been working yourself to the bone, I should've seen it sooner...I'm sorry."

It was an unfathomable time later that saw her curled up in his bed, his tattered old shurikan print quilt (salvaged from the remains of his old apartment building by a couple of faithful hounds) wrapped around her and two mugs of tea cooling on the desk. He perched beside her on the bed, his hand resting on her back lightly; some of his awkwardness had returned, but it didn't hinder his efforts at comforting her. Rather, it had an opposite effect; it was so distinctly him that it was every bit as effective as the warm blanket draped over her.

"I want you to take some time off. You're burned out, Sakura...it's only going to get worse if you keep pushing." His hand rubbed careful circles into her back. "Believe me...I know."

She bit her lip but nodded slightly. She didn't have it in her to argue, and deep down, she knew she had to do _something_ to fix the aching in her chest.

"...you can keep me company or something. It gets boring cooped up in that office," Kakashi said, his tone soft but clearly attempting something like teasing cheer.

Sakura offered the faintest of smiles.

"Someone has to help Shizune and Shikamaru keep you in line," she murmured.

"Good luck," Kakashi chuckled softly, squeezing her shoulder.

She laid her hand over his and squeezed back, the knot between her lungs easing slightly. It wasn't perfect, but this felt much closer to home than the empty apartment.

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 **AN: Hope you enjoyed. Please review; it motivates me to post more.**


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